"The Thomas Book" - Review of Books Received, Wm. and Mary Qrtly., 1900

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The Thomas Book, Giving the Genealogies of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, K. G., the
Thomas Family Descended from Him, and of Some Allied Families.

   Lawrence Buckley Thomas

   William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1.
   (Jul., 1900), pp. 65-66.

THE THOMAS BOOK, GIVING THE GENEAOLOGIES OF SIR RHYS AP THOMAS, K. G., THE
THOMAS FAMILY DESCENDED FROM HIM, AND OF SOME ALLIED FAMILIES.  By Lawrence
Buckley Thomas, D.D.  Imprinted at New York City by Henry T. Thomas Company.

   The make-up of this work in style, printing, illustration and binding is perfect.  
The literary value of the work, too, is very great.  There are genealogies of very many 
American families, besides of sixty families of

Page 66.

Thomas in America and in Europe.  The work which has been done on these families seems for
the most part to have exemplified the spirit of the introduction, which states that con-
temporary records alone are to be regarded in working up a pedigree.  The title, however,
of the book is somewhat misleading, since the author distinctly fails to connect any
American Thomas family with Sir Rhys ap Thomas.  The origin of the Howard families of
Maryland does not appear to be satisfactorily traced.  It is very probable that the Mary-
land emigrants came from Virginia, as individuals of that body of Puritans who settled
from time to time in Dorchester and Ann Arundel counties.  Some of these Puritans went
from Lower Norfolk county and Nansemond county.  Others went from York county.  Represen-
tatives of the Howard name apepar to have emigrated from both sections.

   In Hotten's list of emigrants a Matthew Lloyd was living at Jamestown in 1624.  There
is no mention in Lower Norfolk county records of Matthew Lloyd, but there is of an Edward
Lloyd and Cornelius Lloyd and Matthew Howard, or Hayward (the name was originally spelt
Haward, Hayward or Heyward), who was close neighbor to the Lloyds, and evidently connected
with them by marriage or blood.  He appears in the first record in Lower Norfolk (1635) as
party to a small law case with Evans.  In 1645, Richard Hall died in Lower Norfolk county,
and Matthew Haward the elder was made his executor, and Cornelius Lloyd was a witness to
the will.  He left his penorial property to Ann, Elizabeth, John, Samuel, Matthew and
Cornelius Howard.  There is an affidavit in which some one makes a charge against a 
servant for slandering Ann, wife of Matthew Haward, by saying she was too intimate with
Edward Lloyd.  After this Matthew Howard disappears from the Norfolk records, and in 1661
Cornelius appears in Maryland as an ensign, and then as member of the Assembly from Ann
Arundel for a number of years, 1671 to 1675.  The connection of this Matthew with Cornelius
is fixed by the will to Richard Hall, and the statement of Col. John Eager Howard, that
his grandfather, Joshua Howard, came to this country in 1667, at the time of Monmouth's
Rebellion, is disproved by the date of his own birth (1752), which would demand another
generation at least.  Assuming that Matthew Howard, of Norfolk, was the father of
Cornelius mentioned in the will of Richard Hall, we have Matthew, of Lower Norfolk county,
Va., who had Cornelius, member of the Maryland Assembly, who had Joshua, grandfather of
Col. John Eager Howard, who had Cornelius, father of same.  (See Hanson's Old Kent of
Maryland).

   John Heyward (Howard) and his brother, Francis Heyward, were early residents of York
county, Va.  Mary, the widow of Francis Heyward, married Bartholomew Eunalls, of Maryland,
formerly of York county, Va.  Francis and John Heyward, son of Francis Heyward, of 
Virginia, were living in Dorchester county, Md., in 1680.  John Heyward, first named, was
the ancestor of a prominent family in Virginia.  (See QUARTERLY, II., p. 98, 167; IV.,
p. 138).